Pharma companies defy Trump's pressure with latest move — and it will impact most Americans
The strong leader persona helped Donald Trump win his second term as the US President. He has stood by his tariffs despite criticism and has confidently defended his polices. However, he hasn't proved to be that effective when it comes to the prices of medicines. The President has been putting pressure on drug companies to lower medication prices for a while. Despite that, Americans will have to deal with price hikes on 350 medicines in the new year.
The United States is notoriously famous around the world for charging its citizens high prices to access medical services. In fact, Americans pay more for medication than the people of any other developed country. People from other countries are sometimes shocked to learn how much Americans have to pay for medicines. Despite the President’s pressure to make it affordable, things are not going to get better any time soon.
According to a CNN report, drugmakers want to raise prices of several branded drugs, including vaccines against COVID, RSV, and shingles, and the cancer treatment Ibrance. This might come as a bit of a surprise to some, as the President has struck deals with 14 drugmakers on prices of some of their medicines for the government’s Medicaid program for low-income Americans and those who pay with cash. However, there are some big-name companies looking to raise prices.
These include Pfizer, Sanofi, Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis, and GSK. Pfizer announced the largest price hikes, which will affect around 80 drugs, including cancer drug Ibrance, migraine pill Nurtec, and COVID treatment Paxlovid, as well as some administered in hospitals, such as morphine and hydromorphone. Most of the hikes are under 10%, but the COVID vaccine Comirnaty will see its price go up by 15%. Some relatively inexpensive hospital drugs will see their prices quadrupled.
These price hikes undermine the deals Donald Trump had struck earlier in the year with a few drugmakers. “These deals are being announced as transformative when, in fact, they really just nibble around the margins in terms of what is really driving high prices for prescription drugs in the U.S.,” Dr. Benjamin Rome, a health policy researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said.
In a company statement, Pfizer claimed that it had adjusted its average price list for 2026 below the overall rate of inflation. “The modest increase is necessary to support investments that allow us to continue to discover and deliver new medicines as well as address increased costs throughout our business,” a part of the statement said, as per the CNN report.
But things are better than the times when it was common for drugmakers to announce massive price hikes. Now, thanks to criticism from lawmakers and new government policies, these hikes have been controlled.
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